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Tuesday, August 01, 2017

The Politics of Fatigue

Summer is half over and I haven’t played enough — almost not at all, but I’ve begun to make some changes to allow it. Yes, I have to finish a book proposal and send it out, but I hate doing it and have to force myself to work at it every day for a little while at least. I have to get outside more and clear my head between sessions. I also have to stop reading obsessively about political goings-on. I’m staying away even though it's especially hard to do when so much is happening. It's been a nice break to avoid politics and write about other things, but here are some political “reflections on the passing scene” as the great columnist Thomas Sowell used to pen occasionally before he retired.

*After seven years of promising to repeal Obama care and passing countless bills to do so knowing they’d be vetoed by Obama, Republicans in Congress can’t do it with a Republican president who would sign it. Meanwhile, Obamacare is collapsing as predicted. Thanks Democrats. Thanks Republicans. You’re both pathetic. If members of Congress and everyone else who works for our way-too-big federal government were forced to be under Obamacare along with the rest of us, it would never have passed in the first place, or would surely be fixed now.

*Seventy years ago, Congress passed Amendment 22 which limited a president to two terms. It’s time for Amendment 28 to limit senators and congressmen to a total of twelve years each, after which they must be banned from lobbying for an additional ten years. Think of all the obnoxious senators and congressmen we wouldn’t have to listen to if Congress’s terms had been limited seventy years ago too? Think of where we’d be today instead of where we are.

*Finally, finally, we have some actual evidence of possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. It’s very thin — not evidence of actual collusion, but only an email indicating that Donald Trump, Jr. was open to hearing about possible help from a Russian back in June, 2016. Over a year of investigation, and that’s all we’ve got. Will another year of even more investigation yield anything else? Don’t hold your breath. The investigation is having the desired effect however. It’s driving Donald Trump crazy, much crazier than he otherwise might be.

*Meanwhile, I’m kicking myself for not working harder against Donald Trump during the primaries. I should have trusted my first instinct that any guy in his seventies who would pay that much attention to his hair has personality problems. When I think that we had sixteen alternatives, any of which would have been so much better, including Scott Walker, Carly Fiorina, Ted Cruz, or anyone else except John Kasich. Okay, maybe even him.

*President Trump’s antics are so embarrassing I can hardly stand it, but Hillary Clinton? I could never have brought myself to put a check next to that name. If I could go back to that voting booth last November, I believe I’d do the same thing. In the meantime, I’d like the president’s sterling cabinet to get together and prepare an ultimatum for their boss: Fire the Mooch, stop tweeting, do what General Kelly tells you, use the speechwriters you had for the Middle East and Poland speeches, and use the teleprompter exclusively when speaking in public — or we resign, en masse, right now. Maybe that would smarten him up.

The Mooch was fired the day after I wrote this on Sunday. Hooray for General Kelly!

*Yeah, Trump’s approval ratings are very low, but guess whose ratings are even lower — the media’s. Trump deserves his ratings and media have certainly earned theirs as well. Can there be any more doubt about left-wing mainstream media bias? Yeah, Fox is biased right, but nearly every other television media outlet is biased left — and most newspapers too. I’ve spent years on both sides of the spectrum and it’s patently obvious to me. Are we all ready to admit this now?

*Trump’s worst mistake would be to fire Attorney General Jeff Sessions. It would be worse than firing Mueller, which would only make the left — in media and in government — go even more crazy than they are now. But how much crazier can they get? They’re already cutting Trump’s head off in effigy and one leftist wing-nut opened fire on Republicans at a baseball practice, nearly killing Congressman Scalise and wounding several others. But to fire Jeff Sessions would sink Trump with conservatives who are already annoyed with his tweets. His support would dry up almost entirely.

*Maybe a third party will emerge of disaffected Democrats and Republicans who would shrink the federal government and return power to the states. We could call it the Tenth Amendment Party.

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. (Amendment 10)

4 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Term limits - absolutely!

Did you know the Democrats wanted Trump to win? They thought it would be easier for themselves if they eliminated all the Republican moderates and then portrayed Trump badly. Well it backfired. I suspect because Bannon successfully messaged on Hillary being the establishment candidate.

• Republicans have certainly proved themselves to be incompetent by their inability to act on Obamacare. After 7 years of planning time they appear simply foolish. Whether Obamacare is “collapsing” is debatable, but what is not debatable is that Democrats have been speaking out about their willingness to fix what needs fixing only to be met with stubbornness from the incompetents. • I like your idea of limiting the terms of congressmen and senators. • “Finally” evidence of possible collusion? That is overlooking a mountain of evidence concerning lie after lie about meetings with Russians. I don’t know what went (is going) on, but do you really believe that the attempt to influence our elections is not serious enough to merit investigating however long it takes? Look at the years that went into Watergate. You think they should just forget the matter and move on? Really? • I also am kicking myself for not working harder against Donald Trump. What is going on is exactly the type of dishonesty and incompetence that I knew would be the result if he won, but I figured he couldn’t win because I couldn’t imagine how others wouldn’t eventually see what a joke of a huckster he really was. I do think that somebody like Ted Cruz would have been just as damaging to the country though, maybe even getting some real things (un)done. • Trump’s “handlers” will never, ever get through to him or control him in any real way. Can you really not see that his ego and mental condition will not allow that to happen? I am glad that “The Mooch” was fired though. • I’m confused about your claim of media “bias”. You admit that even conservatives like yourself can see how awful he is, and yet when the media points it out you whine bias. Simply reporting the facts of his actions and tweets make him look like a bumbling, delusional oaf. How is that the media’s fault? • I agree that firing Sessions and/or Mueller would be a big mistake. Which means he is likely to do it. • I like your idea of a new party made up of disaffected Democrats and Republicans.

As to your fascination with Thomas Sowell, he has made many statements that instantly classify him as a bit deranged, such as when he said students shouldn’t help out at a homeless shelter because they shouldn’t have to be involved in, and I quote, “feeding people who refuse to work”.

This ignorant statement is so vile on so many levels I don’t know where to begin. First off, many people who are homeless are homeless because of mental illness – specifically schizophrenia. It’s very seldom due to lack of character or laziness.

And how about this dandy: “To find anything comparable to the crowds’ euphoric reactions to Mr. Obama, you would have to go back to the old news reels of German crowds in the 1930’s with their adulation of their Fuehrer, Adolf Hitler.”

In other words, he is not to be taken seriously.

And to the Capt: are you really so hoodwinked that you cannot see that this administration has so many secrets and lies that they are the furthest thing from "transparent"?

“This is not a transparent White House,” Richard Painter, President George W. Bush’s chief White House ethics lawyer, told POLITICO. “He’s nowhere near as transparent as Obama because you don’t have the visitor log, you don’t have the president’s tax return — you don’t have a lot of information."